


in the shadows (it is warm)

by Anonymous



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, Implied Character Death, nothing big it is just Tooru's dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:33:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27684967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Oikawa Tooru will die unhappy. It is a curse, prophecy, and challenge all at once.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime & Oikawa Tooru
Kudos: 3
Collections: Anonymous





	in the shadows (it is warm)

**Author's Note:**

> the first part of a few canonverse character studies

_Oikawa Tooru will die unhappy. It is a curse, prophecy, and challenge all at once._

Tooru’s father dies three days before he is born. Tooru’s mother had wept when she first saw Tooru smile his father’s soft, easy smile. She clung to him, under the blank sterile lights of the hospital, her own parents loitering anxiously outside. She named him Tooru, but in his brown eyes she saw someone else.

From the moment he drew his first breathe, from three days before the first lights of the earth touched his skin, Oikawa Tooru lives in someone else’s shadow.

It’s warmer than you’d expect, in the shadow. He probably has Hajime to thank for that. The first time they’d met, Tooru fallen and bawled like the world was ending. Hajime had pressed a kiss to the (barely bruised knee) then promptly knocked Tooru flat on his ass for “making a ruckus so loud you’d wake the grumpy old man who lives next door and we’ll be in REAL trouble.”

If Tooru had lived in a shadow before, then Kageyama Tobio was a total eclipse of the sun. Tooru had fallen in love with volleyball at the same time Tobio had, but he was still two years late to the game. Tobio lived and breathed volleyball, and it breathed life into him back.

All the court ever gave Tooru was the bitter tang of defeat, the taste so much stronger than the barely-there sweetness of victory.

If every defeat could only be balanced out by five victories, then Tooru would have to win six matches for every loss to Shiratorizawa. Six more for every loss to Tobio in training, when their coach would pass his gaze over Tooru put Tobio on a team of their strongest hitters. He’d said it was to help Tooru learn to play with versatile hitters, but Tooru knew better. He knew what he

_A genius._ People had said. They’d called Tooru all sorts of things. _Gifted. Admirable. Persistent._ But never _genius._

Tooru wants the title for his own. Never gets it. Never earns it. Never deserves it.

He wants to scream at Tobio.

_Why do you love volleyball how did you get so good how did you get better than me why are you better why aren’t I enough what am I missing give it to me I hate you I hate you I don’t hate you I hate myself I HATE YOU._

For the first time, the shadows feel cold. His hands tremble with rage, with anguish. With the urge to hold something that he’ll never earn, never be worthy of.

They hold onto his “best middle school setter” award instead, and it feels cheap. Like a plastic trophy you could buy at any old party store. A trinket.

He wants to break it into a thousand pieces but sets it down on his desk instead. He needed to take it to the jewellers tomorrow to get his name engraved on the plaque.

He hopes Tobio wins the award the next year and runs a finger over where the sharp characters of Tooru’s name are burned into the glass.

Tooru graduates, and it is better for a while. He trains and works and tries to woo volleyball into loving him back (it’s as successful as his other romantic endeavours…). He swears that by the next time they meet, he’ll be a good senpai to Tobio. He’ll crush the teeth of the jealousy eating away at himself, grind them down and blow away to dust.

It is rather anticlimactic, when Tobio ends up at Karasuno instead.

It’s hard to be a good senpai to your rival.

Still. He tries.

They win against Karasuno. They leave Sendai stadium under the high noon sun. Tooru barely casts a shadow as he walks. He feels unsettled.

Shiratorizawa is there. They’re always there.

Tobio asks him for help again. Tooru indulges a childish part of himself. If he couldn’t have the mantle of genius, at least he could have a genius bow to him.

_The Grand King._

_What’s the use of a Grand King when a King already exists?_

Turns out with Hinata Shoyo, a sun that burns brighter and fiercer than anything Tooru has felt before, Tobio throws Tooru even further into the shade.

They lose to Karasuno. They leave Sendai stadium just as the sun is setting, casting shadows over the world.

Tooru feels content. This at least, is familiar. The bitterness of loss washed down with two bowls of ramen. This at least, is unfamiliar. Shiratorizawa won’t be there. There’ll be nothing there for Tooru, for all of them.

They lost.

“You’ll die unhappy you know?” Hajime says, to the stars more than anything else.

  
“WHAT KIND OF SHITTY CURSE IS THAT IWA-CHAN?”

“It’s the truth. It’s your birthright.” Hajime sighs, and Tooru sees himself reflected in his eyes. Talented. Hollow. _Cursed._

He doesn’t know how to reply, so he says nothing at all.

Hajime sighs again, like he’s waiting for Tooru to connect the dots and reveal the truths of the universe to him.

“Tooru. You know you’re allowed to want things, right?”

“What kind of statement is that? Of course, I know I can want things. I want some soda right now. Get it for me.”

Hajime fixes him with a stare. “You want things like you’re trying to prove a point to someone else. You can just want things for yourself.”

Tooru toes at a stone, kicking it. It patters down the street.

“I don’t even know what I want.”

“Sure, you do. To be the best. To beat the best.”

“How’s that any different from wanting to beat Tobio or Ushiwaka?”

“Easy. They’re not the best.”

“I’m worried. That if I start letting myself _want_ so recklessly then I might never stop.” Tooru loses the lilting cadence to his voice. Only a few people heard him like this, open, vulnerable and _honest_.

“Nothing wrong with that, it’s why you’ll die unhappy Shittykawa.” Hajime barks a laugh, infinitely fond. “Because even after you’ve died, your ghost will be like ‘man. That sucks. I wanted to live.’”

Tooru blinks in surprise. He smiles, then giggles, then laughs and laughs and laughs.

(“If I die, I’m definitely haunting you.”

“I would exorcise you immediately. Ghostbusters on your ass.”)

The moon peeks behind a cloud, joining with its crescent smile. The shadows are warm.


End file.
